China Economic Outlook

From January through July, Chinese industrial firms with annual revenue over US3 million reported total profits above 4.2 trillion yuan, up 21.2% from the same period last year, acording to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The improvement comes despite a slight slowdown in July, with profits rising 16.5% year on year, versus the 19.1% in June.

Profit at state-owned insdustrial companies grew at 34.2% i July year over year, far outperforming the overal growth of the sector, Caixin .

He Ping of the National Bureau of Statistics said the slowdown in July was seasonal, due to higher temperatures, but performance continues to improve thanks to supply-side structural reforms.

Poverty

China lifted an average of 13.9 million people out of poverty each year from 2012 to 2016, and the annual per capita income in impoverished rural areas has grown 10.7 percent every year, according to a report from the State Council Tuesday.

The report on poverty relief work was delivered by Liu Yongfu on behalf of the State Council at the ongoing bimonthly session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee.

China’s top legislator Zhang Dejiang attended the session.

“The State Council has always put a lot of effort into poverty relief. The government work reports in the past four years all promised to lift at least 10 million out of poverty,” said Liu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

From 1978 to 2016, about 730 million Chinese people has been lifted out of poverty.

China has set 2020 as the target year to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society, which requires the eradication of poverty.

As of the end of 2016, there were 43.35 million people in China living below the country’s poverty line of 2,300 yuan (348.9 U.S. dollars) of annual income as constant with 2010 prices, accounting for about 3 percent of China’s population.

To achieve the target, China needs to bring more than 10 million people out of poverty every year, meaning nearly one million people per month or 20 people per minute.

IPO

China’s technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sectors saw 59 IPOs in the first half of 2017, according to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on Tuesday.

The figure was almost the same as the second half of 2016, when 58 TMT companies went public.

The IPOs raised a total of 25.8 billion yuan (3.9 billion U.S. dollars) in H1, PwC said.

A total of 27 were listed on the Growth Enterprises Market (GEM) Board in Shenzhen, raising 9 billion yuan, while 19 went public on the Main Board, collecting 10.8 billion yuan. Another 12 TMT IPOs were listed on the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Board and one on an overseas market.

The report also showed that the average price-to-earning (PE) ratio in the A share market almost halved in June this year from the end of 2015.

“IPOs in the TMT sector maintained a high number as many companies seeking IPOs in the second half of 2016 were only given green light this year as China sped up the approval of IPOs,” said Gao Jianbin, PwC China TMT partner. “In addition, SMEs and start-ups in the sector remained active, and this has also helped raise the number of public listings in China.”

Shayne Heffernan Funds Manager at HEFFX holds a Ph.D. in Economics and brings with him over 25 years of trading experience in Asia and hands on experience in Venture Capital, he has been involved in several start ups that have seen market capitalization over $500m and 1 that reach a peak market cap of $15b. He has managed and overseen start ups in Mining, Shipping, Technology and Financial Services.